NARRATOR: Kimura used to operate the reactors and maintained the fuel rods at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. He confessed that TEPCO has deceived the government, which regulates the nuclear power plants, in a number of ways.

KIMURA: As a part of operational management of the nuclear power plant, we used to rewrite the daily operative reports. We used to access the computer to falsify the data when things weren’t going our way.

Owners want back land used by evacuees

The Yomiuri Shimbun

Some owners of property loaned to the government for temporary housing after last year’s disaster are reluctant to extend the initial two-year contract despite the government’s recent decision to extend the accommodation period by a year, according to sources.

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, temporary housing units were constructed on private land due to a lack of public land in disaster-hit areas. Some landowners say they plan to ask for the return of their land at the end of the contract.

Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoko Komiyama announced Tuesday that the government will allow the evacuees to stay another year in their temporary housing units and other accommodations, such as privately owned apartments for which local governments pay rent.

[…] On December 16, Kan’s successor, Yoshihiko Noda, announced that the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station had reached “a state of cold shutdown.” Japan’s worst-ever nuclear accident, the Prime Minister said, had finally been brought under control.

The moment was meant to be a calming milestone, psychological balm for a wounded country in the process of trying to heal. The only problem with it, as workers today at the nuclear power plant, will tell you, is this: it wasn’t true then, and it’s still not true today. “The coolant water is keeping the reactor temperatures at a certain level, but that’s not even near the goal [of a cold shut down,]” says an engineer working inside the plant. “The fact is, we still don’t know what’s going on inside the reactors.”

FUKUSHIMA — Three rice farmers in Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, and elsewhere on April 20 asked for mediation for an out-of-court settlement as they seek around 3.4 billion yen for field decontamination fees and other purposes.

The farmers asked for mediation from a center for settling disputes on compensation for nuclear-related losses. The three farm 10 to 40 hectares of land located 57 to 82 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant. The farmers have been told by the Fukushima Prefectural Government and the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to decontaminate their lands and had their planting restricted.

There is an urgent need to implement strategy in case of a large-scale earthquake with an epicenter near the Tokyo metropolitan area.

According to information recently released by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, some 10 percent or about 300,000 buildings in Tokyo are predicted to collapse or burn down, with casualties reaching as high as 9,700, in the case of a magnitude-7.3 quake in northern Tokyo Bay. The figures were obtained through computer simulations that took into consideration the latest data from the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011.

Bread and becquerels: a year of living dangerously

Nuclear disaster has turned family routine on its head

By GIANNI SIMONE

My New Year’s resolution back in January was to survive this year, and many more to come, which means keeping myself and my family as far from harm’s way as possible.

Loud and clear: Demonstrators offer their thoughts on the antics of Tokyo Electric Power Co., the company behind the leaking Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, at a protest in Tokyo in September. GIANNI SIMONE

Unfortunately, staying healthy in the atomic age is far from easy, particularly after the nuclear accident in Fukushima. 2012 is already showing the telltale signs of radiation exposure — a weird one-day excrescence at the end of February certainly doesn’t bode well for the future.

My overall impression is that without decisive intervention from the central government, the do-it-yourself approach to survival is the only one that really works. God helps those who help themselves, after all. You don’t need to be a believer to agree, but who knows, perhaps a touch of faith might help.

One year has passed since the nuclear accident at Fukushima, and very few things seem to have improved — or even changed, for that matter — since last March. I am among those who initially believed the reassuring words of those people who, sometimes in good faith, downplayed the risks of possible radioactive contamination. Also, as my family lives in Yokohama, I rather naively felt that we were a safe enough distance away from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

[snip]

Toto Seikatsu Club (www.tohto-coop.or.jp/), for instance, checks each and every product for cesium-134 and 137, as well as radioactive iodine. They will not sell anything that exceeds 2 becquerels of radioactivity per kilogram. Here you can buy such “risky” food as green tea, spinach, renkon (lotus root) and mushrooms, if you really can’t resist the temptation.

On the other hand, Radish Boya (www.radishbo-ya.co.jp/index.html), which is very popular because it offers organic vegetables and other additive-free foods, has recently been blacklisted by my wife and her more hard-core friends because there seems to be a discrepancy between what they say and what they actually do.

Tokyo, April 20 (Jiji Press)–Only 26.1 pct of people in Japan are more worried about food safety after last year’s earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters, a Cabinet Office survey showed Friday.

According to the survey, 55.8 pct said their dietary habits have not changed since the disasters, signaling that people do not think securing food safety is more challenging than before.
Among men, 17.6 pct said they are more concerned about food safety. The figure among women was 33.0 pct.
By region, the proportion of such people stood at 35.1 pct in Shikoku, southwestern Japan, 34.8 pct in Tohoku, northeastern Japan, 30.2 pct in Kanto that includes Tokyo, and 21.4 pct in Kyushu, southwestern Japan. The proportion was lowest at 16.1 pct in Chugoku, western Japan.
The survey, which allowed multiple answers, showed 17.1 pct said they pay attention to energy saving in their eating habits.

(2012/04/20-22:01)

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Ministry of Agriculture to Food Industry: Don’t Use Own Radiation Standard, Use Government’s

The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries notified the food industry on April 20 that the industry should abide by the radiation safety standards set by the national government, and not use their own (i.e. lower) standards.

The reason? Actually there are two:

So that the testing is “scientific” (meaning if companies are going to test on their own they are strongly encouraged to do so at the testing laboratories registered with the Ministry – there are 40 of them in Japan according to theMinistry’s information);

To avoid “excessive” regulation and to use the government standards in presenting the results.